Monday, April 13, 2009

Billboard Revenue Meltdown

I walk past these two advertisements almost everyday on my way to a studio I work out of often. Ussually they advertise for some high fashion clothing complany or an ucpoming movie that is willing to shell out what are probably big bucks for such prime chesea real estate. Both had been empty for quite a while until the Manhattan Mini Storage sign was put up on the right billboard about a month ago. The billboard on the left stayed blank until this ad for Larry Flynt's Hustler Club went up no more than two days ago. A while back I posted about what I thought was a unusual number of empty billboards probably caused by economic fears and cuts in advertising spending. The recent posting of this ad for Larry Flynt only strengthens my belief that the large outdoor advertising companies are feeling the burn of economic meltdown. If not, these billbaords would not have sat idle for so many months only to be used by what are clearly companies taking advantage of what are probably highly reduced rental rates.

2 Comments:

Thanks for the comment Justin, it's good to see you keep an eye on the site. Ever since you started commenting I have been curious what your relationship to the industry is.

If you have more insight to provide I would be excited to hear the real story behind my speculations. I have only a sense of what industry standards are for large billboard locations like the ones pictured. As ignorant as you think my postulations may be, the fact of the matter is that after sitting idle, the return of advertising content to this site came from a business that would never have used this type of location. This leads me to believe their was some incentive, and that incentive was probably a rate reduction. Not too far fetched.